


a soft place to land

by eitherSadness_orEuphoria



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Jewish, Canon Rewrite, Gen, Jewpernatural, Jupernatural, everybody needs a hug, fuck john winchester all my homies hate john winchester
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-01
Updated: 2021-02-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 16:33:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29138613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eitherSadness_orEuphoria/pseuds/eitherSadness_orEuphoria
Summary: is it wrong not to mourn?
Relationships: Ash & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jo Harvelle & Dean Winchester, Jo Harvelle & Sam Winchester
Comments: 7
Kudos: 13





	1. Bobby's House

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> is it wrong not to mourn?

Everyone was okay with the assumption. Hunters went missing on jobs all the time. Hunters DIED on jobs all the time. So when the Winchester boys held the funeral for their dad at Bobby’s, they didn’t have too many questions to answer.

The worst part was listening to the charming anecdotes from his old friends. Hearing them remembering the hard and calloused hands as soft and comforting.

Sam, barely 14 at the time, spent most of the day in the room Bobby had cleared out for him. It was small, with worn wallpaper and a twin mattress, but it was HIS. His own room, for the first time in his memory.

He’d unpacked his things carefully. Giving each book, each shirt, each tchotchke from a roadside attraction, each Polaroid its own spot. He was missing a few state snowglobes -- John had smashed a few when he got angry -- and Sam made a mental note to replace them.

It was the quiet up there that wrapped Sam up so well. He slept most of the day, for the first time not surrounded by the Impala’s engine and the tires hitting the gravel, the clink of the ice machine and the buzz of the box television, the raised voice of his father and the quiet defiance of his brother. For once, it was quiet.

He wrapped himself up in the threadbare quilt that had been hospital cornered between the mattress and the iron frame, and it took him no time at all to sleep.

Dean wasn’t given that luxury.

He stood there, caught in a corner of the kitchen, holding a beer and staring into the middle distance as someone his dad hunted with years ago talked in his periphery.

He was 18. He shouldn’t be at his dad’s funeral. He shouldn’t be mourning.

That’s what stood the most prominently in his mind. Was he even mourning?

There had been things he loved about his father. But they barely bubbled up in his consciousness.

These people, they loved John. They idolized him. He was part of their family.

He suddenly felt more tired and worn than he knew any 18 year old had the right to be. He excused himself to the porch.

It was too much. The people around him praising a man who had never shown up for him, not in the ways that mattered. Offering sympathies when Dean didn’t have it in him to shed a tear.

John had said something about crying. That men didn’t cry. After years of hearing it when his emotions were boiling over, Dean had run out of other places to put that energy. He would take it out when he slashed and shot during hunts, when he dug up a grave, when he used the words his father hissed.

Sometimes, if he had a chance, he’d take the car and drive out into an open field in the middle of nowhere (they were so often in the middle of nowhere) and yell. It shook the stalks, rattled the crows. But at least someone heard him.

“You alright, boy?”

Bobby’d followed him out. His hands were not like John’s. The callouses gave way to gentle warmth.

Dean sniffed. He didn’t realize he’d needed to. “I couldn’t stay in there.”

“Me neither. Funny how people act at these things, huh.” Bobby leaned against the railing, looking at the expanse. “I never got why people are so kind to the dead. Feels like a hit to the living.”

The wood squeaked as Dean shifted his weight. It had squeaked as long as Dean could remember.

A silence. Then,

“I haven’t had a chance to thank you yet.”  
“No need, you two are kin.”  
“But what you’re doing for us…”  
“Dean.” Bobby pulled him around to lock eyes. A wordless agreement. “I’m glad you called me first.”  
“You were the only person we could think of.”

The calloused yet kind hands of Bobby Singer pulled Dean in for a hug as they looked off the porch, and for the first time in years, Dean cried.


	2. 1:14 am

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how do you get blood out of a motel carpet?  
> how hard do you have to scrub?

Figuring out how to get to Bobby’s was the easy part.

Sam always watched the signs when they drove somewhere. The numbers and how they converged. The signs for kitschy stops like dollhouse museums or waterfalls, billboard advertisements for water parks and renaissance fairs. The back window of the Impala was his view to the world.

Sometimes, he would play a game where he looked into the windows of cars passing by and guessed who they were. He and Dean played this when they were in public, too -- picking people at the diners they went to so often, eating meals slightly more substantial than the gas station sandwiches their dad would buy from one job to another. But it had to be a solo game in the car. Lest John think they wanted to be anywhere but there.

The leather felt cold and unfamiliar. The night was that humid kind of cold you get as the seasons shift from winter to spring, when there’s still dark and muddied banks of snow in the corners of parking lots. Dean ushered him past one of them, holding the corduroy jacket that had been next to the door around his shaking shoulders.

“I’ll be right back. I’ll take care of it, Sammy. I promise.”

Dean left him there, in the backseat of the Impala, measuring his breath. The windows fogged easily with the added warmth, and Sam wiped it away, looking at the shadows in the shaded window of the motel, as his brother collected every single thing they had owned in the past few years.

Sam was scared. He was scared of himself. He was scared of his every breath. He was scared of what had just happened.

The one reassurance he had was that his brother would look out for him. That Dean would make it all okay.

\---

“Bobby?” Dean’s voice was straining not to crack under pressure. He stood in the corner of the room, right behind the door, now empty of all their belongings. All, well, except one.

The voice that answered the phone was barely awake. “What’s wrong, Dean?”

The strain was too much. He turned away from the body, looking out the window, looking at his brother. “Bobby, we need your help.”

The grogginess disappeared. Now alert and awake, Dean could hear Bobby spring into action on the other side of the phone. “Is everything okay? Are you and Sam-”

“Can we stay at yours?”

“Of course. How far are you out?”

“South Dakota.”

Beat. Dean’s leg starts to shake. All the air stalls in his body.

“Bobby, how do I get rid of a body?”

Silence.

“Something go wrong on a hunt?”

“You could say that.”

Dean turned around to look at the spot where his father had crumpled to the floor, neck broke, pulse obsolete. It was covered now, draped with a blanket off one of the beds, but Dean could still see the edges of his form -- the toe of his shoe, the wedding ring on his finger that he’d refused to take off for the past 13 and a half years.

Bobby was running through possible courses of action, but Dean barely heard him. He looked from the bags near the door to the shell of a man on the floor. And then, with barely a thought about it, he reached down and pulled the ring off, sticking it in his pocket.

About an hour later, Dean joined Sam in the car. The sudden jolt of the door woke him from the restless nap he’d given way to across the back seats. Dean’s leg shake had developed into shaking hands, too, but he was in front of Sam now. He couldn’t show that kind of weakness, not when Sammy needed him.

“... What’d you do with him?”

“Don’t worry about it, Sammy.” Dean sat in the driver’s seat now, a foreign thing Sam knew in the back of his mind he had done many times before, but it wasn’t until then that it felt wrong. Like the seat dwarfed him.

“What are we going to do?” It left his mouth small and timid. Sam could close his eyes and feel the snap. The question was less “where do we go?” and more “what do we do with me?”

“We’re going to Bobby’s. Know the way?”

Sam nodded. Bobby’s would be safe. Bobby would know what was wrong with him.

“Good.” The car, still cold in the dead of night, was a bit warmer now. “Wanna move into shotgun? We can play people gazing.”


	3. Adaptation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how old do you have to be before learning new tricks is off the table? can someone learn to dream again? does any 18 year old really know what they want to do with their life?

It was a change of pace, living at Bobby’s. Not an unwelcome one at all, but… different. Sam couldn’t remember the last time he stayed in one place this long. And by Halloween, it was official.

He had lived at Bobby’s longer than he had anywhere else.

Dean stopped by whenever he could. He tried to stay at first, but just over a month in, Sam woke up to hear raised voices downstairs.

The job Bobby had just heard about over his dispatch line was nearby. It was quick. And it was urgent. Bobby was recovering from a broken wrist he’d sustained on his most recent job, he was gonna be little use to anyone.

He’d been looking through his contacts, checking on possible assistance, when Dean walked in. Sam wasn’t sure where Dean went that late at night. He knew Dean was studying for a GED -- he’d tried high school too many times in too many towns to ever settle into a real school, especially this close to when he should have been graduating. But he couldn’t figure out what Dean did with his time when he wasn’t at Bobby’s -- he guessed he should start calling it home, now: the word felt foreign to him but right in this case -- or when he wasn’t at the library, studying.

Dean, in all honesty, spent a lot of time driving. He wasn’t sure what to do out there, but at least on the road, he didn’t have to have an end destination in mind. He could just… drive. He was always back by dinner, but after that, he’d take off again. He hadn’t been able to sleep, and the road soothed him.

That was his state of mind that night, when he walked in, afraid of waking anyone up, to see Bobby pacing around with his phone in his healthy hand. “Alright. Thanks, Rufus.” He hung up with a whispered “shit.”

“Bobby?” Dean hung his jacket on the coat rack near the door -- a coat rack is such a wonderful thing to have -- and the keys on the hook. It was alien at first to have this place to rest his things, but Bobby had insisted. Easier to keep from losing yourself when you know where you put it all, ain’t it?

Bobby picked his head up and offered Dean a small smile. “You’re out late.”  
“And you’re up late. How’s Rufus?”  
“On the other side of the country, apparently. I was hoping he could handle a case for me, but…” Bobby sighed. “Can you take care of things around here while I knock this one out? Shouldn’t be any longer than the weekend.”  
“What’s the case?” Dean looked over the notes Bobby had scribbled out. “Salt and burn?”  
“Probably.”  
“Oh, I can knock this out easy.”  
“You ain’t going nowhere, kid. I’ll keep calling around if I have to.”  
“Why not? You need a hunter, you got a hunter. Besides, you gonna dig some poor bastard’s grave up with one hand if you can’t find someone else?”

An uncomfortable silence. Sam, sitting out of sight, traced the grain of the wood with his finger.  
Bobby spoke softly now. “You don’t have to go back in, Dean. You don’t have to do this.”  
“What else am I supposed to do?” Dean’s voice was quiet now too, but an earnest push sat behind it. Not a sarcastic plead for direction, not an offhanded one. A genuine, stumped, drained one. “Sam has a chance, Bobby. I don’t think I have one.”  
“It’s not too late.”  
“I think it is. God, I don’t know what else to do with myself! I’m not going to school. Last time I wanted to be something was when I was little and wanted to be a fireman. Now, all I know how to do, all I can do, is hunt.” Beat. “Bobby, I think I’m gonna end up neck deep no matter what. Just… let me do this.”

A deep sigh. The idea of Dean going wasn’t too far from Bobby’s mind, if he was being honest with himself, but so much of him had wanted Dean to have a life now that John wasn’t controlling it.

He sat down on the couch and gestured for Dean to join him. It was painful, sometimes, to see how much of John had made its way into Dean. The way he talked. The drive. But they had trusted him after that night, after John died, and that had to mean something. Bobby could fill the spaces in.

“Okay, ground rules. You check in, every day. Before you go do something stupid, right after you’re done. You come back here whenever you can, and you come back in one piece.”  
“Yes sir.”  
“Sam’s gonna be worried about you.” Beat. “I’m gonna be worried about you.”  
“I’ll send postcards. And I’ll call, every day.”  
“Jo’ll want postcards, too. Visit The Roadhouse when you get the chance. And don’t you DARE forget her bat mitzvah.”  
“Absolutely.” Dean paused. The weight of this decision was starting to hit. It was what he imagined leaving for college must feel like. “Bobby… I don’t know who I am without this.”  
“I have one more thing I need you to promise me, kid. As soon as you figure that out -- as soon as you figure out who you are -- you quit.”

Dean left that night. Sam had scuttled back to his room by that point, and feigned waking up when Dean entered. A few minutes of explanation and promises to buy something from the first rest stop he saw after the hunt was done, Dean was gone.

A few days later, Dean pulled back into the driveway in front of the house, his home, with a small wooden cow (more rotund than ornate), who had sat on the dash for the whole ride back.


	4. When You're a Jet...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dean gets his first 'A', amongst other things.

Sometimes Dean wishes he had a war to die for.  
Not a secret war, like his father drafted him for, pulling him into service before he knew, truly, what death was. How death could haunt you.  
He thinks about the world wars. The disillusioned masses returning after service, becoming the Lost Generation. Drowning their fears and diving into creation. It wouldn’t be so bad, he thought, if he wasn’t suffering alone.  
That’s why he thought of wars. Because there’s no lying about who you are, who the enemy is, or why you’re there. To him, having a general that wasn’t his father, serving for more than his brother, that was the closest thing he had to escapism.

And then he read Gatsby in one of the miscellaneous English classes he was dropped into through high school. It was in Delaware, if he remembered correctly.

Something… something stood out to him about it all. He couldn’t put a finger on it for the longest tie, and then...   
In the middle of the night, washing up after he and Sammie ate dinner alone in the motel, while old reruns played on the deep set television, he realized what it was.

Nick was like him.

Now, there’s only so much Dean had allowed himself to think in his then-15 years on Earth. He caught himself looking, thinking. He would hear his father’s words echo, don’t, don’t… 

His dad would hate to hear how Dean took Sam to see West Side Story at their last school. He would hate to hear that Dean went because he wanted to see Brendan, the boy from his history class who played Riff. He would hate to hear how, after seeing Brendan get a congratulatory kiss from his girlfriend (who was in the ensemble) after bows, he pulled Sammy out of the auditorium at the speed of light, dropped him off at the motel, and proceeded to drive around with no goal in sight for at least an hour. He would hate that Dean still hummed West Side Story to himself when he was alone.

He wasn’t sure what part of the story made him recognize Nick. He wasn’t even sure what to call himself, let alone this character in a thin novel that he read faster than anything he’d ever been given for an assignment, doubling back to the start within days.

What word would he use? The lexicon was riddled with terms his father had made dirty, whenever they heard Bowie in a diner. When he first met Bobby, a part of him could barely believe John was on friendly terms with someone he seemed to vilify as much as the monsters they hunted. Bobby explained to him, one muggy August, that somehow John thought Bobby was “acceptable”. He laughed at that, which Bobby found odd, and followed it up with something even odder.  
“Dean, every part of you is acceptable, and don’t you forget that. You deserve to be yourself, and none of it’s wrong.”  
How had Bobby known?

Maybe that’s how he knew Nick was like him. However Bobby had known Dean was. That inkling in the depths of the brain, not unlike the one his father had drilled into him when hunting. But different. So, so different.

The paper he turned in for the book was the first A he’d ever gotten in English. Sammy asked to read the paper. Dean folded it up and slid it into a corner of his bag he knew his father would never find.  
“Maybe another time, Sammy. Want some ice cream?”  
For the first time, he allowed himself to think. He allowed himself to enjoy Bowie playing over the tinny speakers.

Sometimes, Dean wished he had a war to fight in. But more often, now, he just wished he wasn’t alone in this one.


	5. Watching Over You

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first, and eventually the second, time Castiel met Dean Winchester. WARNING: strong language from J*hn Winchester

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> in celebration of their wedding today, 2/14/21! mazel tov <3

There are moments that Castiel observed from the beyond that made him fall in love with humanity.  
Small moments. The little acts of kindness and forgiveness that defied logic or reason. He’d walked amongst the hippies and the yuppies during the be-ins, warming his host by the fire of discarded draft cards. He’d watched folks travel along the Underground Railroad, seen the warmth in the eyes of the people who guided them. He’d smiled at a teacher who gave a student a second chance on an exam after they’d been caught cheating, at people who saw abandoned dogs on the side of the road and adopted them, at volunteers at food banks, at men like Jonas Salk (Salk had been one of Castiel’s favorites).  
This one took Castiel by surprise, however.  
It was a quiet night in the late 1990s. He wasn’t supposed to be watching that night. He had other duties. But he truly loved watching them. It was odd, to the other angels -- humans were an experiment, an ant farm, a sea monkey tank -- and what pleasure could one derive from watching their machinations longer than was required to collect that data?  
But he watched.  
Someone had prayed to him nearby. A small blessing, asking for their tank of gas to last them until the next station, which Castiel provided. And then…  
Not necessarily a prayer, and not necessarily directed towards him. But he could feel the energy.

A kid sat on the edge of a bed in a motel room. Quiet, demanding he took up less space than he truly did. He knotted his fingers together, rubbing one thumb over his nails, which were coated in a patchy layer of nail polish.  
A dad, furious, arguing with his eldest.  
“So what if he wanted to paint his nails, dad? Is it hurting you? Is it hurting anyone?”  
“I’m not gonna have my son dressing up like some kind of fag, Dean.”  
“Oh, so you’re gonna act like you’re our dad now, that’s rich.”  
A slap. A slap that shook the earth.  
“Don’t you DARE talk back to me like that. Next time you speak back to me, you’re gonna wish you’d never been born.”  
Quiet now. “Yessir.”  
Something was happening on the other side of the room. A quiet rumbling.  
A quiet, cracking voice.  
“Don’t touch him.”  
The boy who’d sat so quietly spoke. “Don’t go near him.” It sounded like he’d been crying. But something deeper, unusual.  
“... Sam?” The one Castiel now knew was named Dean walked over to his brother, holding his hand out to steady him. “Are you alright?”  
The ground started to shake, too. The dad steadied himself against the wall. Dean’s only concern was his brother.  
Sam, without doing more than closing his eyes, snapped his father's neck.   
John Winchester fell to the ground.  
Dean paused, observing what had happened. He looked to his baby brother, equally shocked and horrified as him, then back to the motel carpet.  
"... Sammy?"  
Sam started to shake. Something started in Dean, and he held him close, patting his hair. "Shh, shh, it's okay."  
"Is dad…"  
"He won't hurt us anymore."  
A panic sets in and Sam tries to pull away. "Did I-?!"  
"We're gonna figure it out, okay? We're gonna figure it out, but we need to get out of here. Get your bag."  
"But-"  
"Sammy, I need you to listen to me, okay? Dad died on the hunt. We don't know what happened to him. Got it?"  
A beat. "Okay."  
"Let's get you in the car, you don't have to see this."  
Dean ushered his brother out of the room and towards the chilly air.  
That was the moment Castiel knew he was in trouble.

Time passes differently in the beyond. If you don't pay attention, you could blink and miss a decade. A century.  
Castiel lost track of Dean Winchester for a few years. The minutiae of angel business was easy to get caught up in. Besides. It was just one human man.  
He couldn't stop thinking about that human man.  
But as easy as it is for angels to find someone who prays to them, it's so much harder for them to find someone who won't. Someone who doesn't know how to. The adamant refusal to engage in the celestial permeates their being, like bug repellant or porcupine spikes. As cute as they are, getting close when their guard is up will hurt.  
So he returned to his work.  
He kept an ear out for that voice, though.

He didn't find Dean again until the High Holidays. It was in a synagogue somewhere in the American Northwest, which (even as Cas observed, and even though he hadn't seen Dean Winchester in several years) seemed to be just a step out of measure with the young man. He had stepped in between services, and the light shone through the high windows with an amber intensity you only really get during the best golden hours of the fall. He gripped the prayer book awkwardly in his hand.  
Dean wasn't sure what he was doing there. The first time he’d gone to synagogue by himself, the first time he’d visited one since Jo’s bat mitzvah. And now Sammy was studying for one at college… maybe that’s why he went that day.  
It had been a hard few weeks. He was coming off a case he’d rather not think about. And Sam had just started school. It was easier when Sam was at Bobby's, but this…  
Of course he was proud. Of course he was excited. But now it felt more and more like all he had was hunting.  
He was sick and tired of only having hunting.  
He sat down in one of the chairs, looked around nervously, then flipped open the book. _Oh thank god. Alliteration._  
He fumbled through a few. The Shema was the only one he still knew by heart. He'd been doing it every night. His mother had made sure he learned it, to keep him safe at night from the monsters under the bed. Even now, even though it felt foolish when he fought them every day, it helped.  
But song is part of prayer, and when you don't know the music, it's so much harder to find the words. And so he paused.  
"This is ridiculous."  
He considered getting up and leaving. He almost did. But then…  
He cleared his throat and settled back in. "You better be listening over there, or I'm gonna look like a real asshole."

Cas was listening.


End file.
